Wireless data transmission devices are becoming very popular, particularly for point of sale transaction processing. Such devices are, in essence, the combination of a transaction processing (client) portion and a radio link (host) portion. Over a period of time, it is anticipated that the processing portion of each device will remain relatively stable while the radio portion will change as commercial standards change and as the technology accommodates faster and faster operation. Also, the design requirements for the processing portion are different and will mature and change at times different from the radio portion.
For example, when a wireless device is used for point of sale credit card, debit card or check processing, as shown in the above-identified copending U.S. patent application entitled “A SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR SECURE PROVISIONING AND CONFIGURATION OF A TRANSACTION PROCESSING DEVICE,” and U.S. patent application entitled “SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR SECURE AUTHENTICATION OF A SUBSCRIBER OF NETWORK SERVICES,” there is created a need to transmit the data from the processing terminal back to a central processing point. One solution is to build a radio device into the processing device and use one of the many wireless communication options available. However, to do this would require that the manufacturer of the point of sale processing equipment make a separate radio type for each of the possible wireless applications, (such as TDMA cellular, PCS, CDMA cellular, private bonds, public bonds other than cellular, etc.) which are available to merchants. That is an almost impossible task for a point of sale terminal manufacturer to achieve, as well as a very uneconomical solution.
A far better approach is to make the processing devices independent from the radio portion and then link the processing portion to a commercially available radio (cell phone, bluetooth modem, etc) so that the actual radio portion is carried by the mainstream (for the location of the point of sale terminal or other processing equipment) wireless carriers using widely available (thereby more economical) consumer devices. For example, the point of sale terminal could be connected to a cell phone and the data transmission can flow over the normal cellular system servicing the merchant's location.
FIG. 1 shows such an arrangement, and typically cell phone 12 is connected to point of sale terminal 11 by a cord (such as cord 101 in FIG. 1) or, in some instances, point of sale terminal 21 (FIG. 2) is constructed to hold a cellular telephone (such as cell phone 12) in a specially designed cradle. These system cause problems in that the cord is awkward and restrictive and the myriad of different telephones and wireless modems requires that the terminal manufacturer design its terminals to connect with, or to hold, different devices, each having a unique form factor and electrical connection protocol.
FIG. 3 shows another example of an attempt to solve this problem by using the wireless device's short range RF link, such as link 301 between the cell phone and terminal 31. While this works well, many of the same problems exist in that each wireless device uses different protocols thereby requiring different processing devices for each such protocol.